


let down your hair

by wildenessat221b



Category: The Lost Future of Pepperharrow - Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Domestic Bliss, Happy Ending, Introspection, M/M, part of it is mori's past, part of it is set after pepperharrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26407657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildenessat221b/pseuds/wildenessat221b
Summary: Six is not impressed with her gift from the local baker.Thaniel thinks it is charming.Worryingly, Mori remembers it.
Relationships: Keita Mori & Six & Thaniel Steepleton, Keita Mori/Thaniel Steepleton
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	let down your hair

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Hyperfixating on Mori because I'm going to Uni in less than a week? It's More Likely Than You Think.

_“Your mother killed herself on the day you were born, you know.”_

_Keita Mori, twelve years old and fragile, willing as he always did decades worth of writhing future memories to quiet beneath his young hummingbird-delicate mind, nodded._

_“Yes,” he said, in an ash cloud of a breath, casting white mist in front of his nose against the sugar-cube solid cold of the twilight. “I do know.”_

_The man frowned, took a step forwards, then narrowed his eyes and peered._

_Keita Mori, twelve years old and really fucking cold, made a conservative effort not to peer back. The man could have been anyone, they didn’t bother telling him who they were sending anymore. He may have been a diplomat, a psychiatrist, a kannushi, a doctor, or indeed a witchdoctor – anyone. He didn’t know and quite simply didn’t care._

_If they could fix him, he’d co-operate, and keep any of the vaguest senses of strangeness as he could at bay. He didn’t stare, nor did his fingers twitch, nor his jaw clench._

_Keita Mori, twelve years old and hopeful, merely watched impassively as the man dragged his treacle-dark gaze up and down his body before letting out a loud and disgruntled huff through his nose. Then he hummed, the low buzzing sound of an angry hive._

_“She was like you. Did you know that?”_

_The man rubbed his thumb along his bottom lip and quirked his eyebrow upwards. His sleeves were long and pendulous, and Keita nodded his head slowly in time with their swinging as he answered._

_“Yes. She could see things before they happened.”_

_The man hummed again._

_“Hmm…” It came out thoughtful, but his face was neutral. “I wonder what she saw.”_

_And then man nodded once, to the room and not to him, and retreated out of the heavy wooden door. It barely made a sound as it closed behind him, muffled by the dense surrounding stone. Keita opened his mouth to call the man back, then swallowed his shout as the futures in which he did disintegrated into shingle. He felt its journey, hot as a coal down his throat, but cold before it reached his stomach and produced a hollow splash._

_The gentle click as the door shut ignited a vivid memory - or rather a thousand woven together in an intricate tapestry - of a similar sound. The click became a tick, and then it became a million ticks, and Keita Mori, twelve years old and alone, clamped his hands over his ears and scooted into the corner of the room, wrapping his arms around his shivering knees._

_He saw his older hands on the back of his eyelids, thumbing through the yellowed pages of a book. It was a Western fairy tale, that much he knew._

**_and he knew that he was reading it because of remembering remembering reading it, right in this very moment, that happened sometimes and it made his mind very claggy, very foggy, very soggy, very dizzy, very confusing, memory loops, before and after, happened and not happened he was only twelve he was only twelve he was only fuckfuckfuckfuck_ **

_He screamed._

_The sound bounced off each of the walls, then landed at his feet. It wasn’t real, but he kicked it away anyway._

_Keita Mori, twelve years old and alone, never saw the man again._

_Nor did Keita Mori thirteen years old and alone, nor fourteen, nor fifteen, nor sixteen. Although he did see many, many others._

***

“She meant well.”

Thaniel bit his lip against the smile that was threatening to blossom across his face, clamping his hands behind his back so that his nails dug in a little. He wasn’t, judging by the knowingly amused, smugness-coated look that Six was giving him, doing a very good job.

“I don’t have to _read_ them, do I?”

She dragged her disdainful gaze down to the book on the kitchen table. It had been left at the door by a lady named Beatrice, who worked at the local bakery and had been clearing out some of her now grown-up daughter’s childhood novels. Beatrice had heard on the grapevine that there was a little girl living on Filigree Street, and had thought, _perfect_. Surely any little girl would simply _adore_ a baby-pink edition of Grimm’s Fairytales, illustrated in watercolour and finished with a gold trim. It was simply _charming_.

Six was already plopping heavily into a chair with a scowl and heaving open an oil splattered generator manual as Thaniel said gently, “You don’t have to do _anything_ you don’t want to do.”

She grunted, and flicked her hair out of her eyes with a toss of her head, then pulled her top lip over her bottom one in concentration. She fisted her little hands beneath her chin as she read, eyes flitting across the page with scholarly swiftness. He may have been biased, but she was a genius, and he didn’t feel arrogant in saying so because he couldn’t claim to have contributed anything.

Thaniel glanced over his shoulder, ready to share a look with Mori that fell into the tripoint of amused, proud and fond.

But Mori had a look in his eyes, somehow both foggy and sharp, like a strike of lightning breaking through a stormy sky. It was the look he used to get before Japan, when futures would die in front of him and he’d be searching through the rubble for the survivor. It made Thaniel run a little cold, seeing that look. In it, he saw Mori delirious and confused and ill and guilty, at the mercy of futures he could see but not understand. He saw himself insecure and jealous and uncertain, enamoured by the man he loved but did not understand.

The past few months had been _blissful_ , a seafaring voyage of discovery, _genuine_ discovery, not just knowing nods from Mori when the most likely outcome finally slotted into place.

They had been months of slow, wandering hands, and a rainforest-green calmness of voice, and eyes that shone in the candlelight with the excitement of the unknown.

Months of _“Is this okay, darling? I can’t tell anymore?”_ and of, _“Yes, my love. It’s perfect.”_

They had lain in bed together one night and Mori had whispered, “I can _breathe_.” His face was pressed into Thaniel’s neck and he could feel the brush of damp eyelashes tickling against his chin. Then he had tilted his head to meet his eyes, and he was lit up the colour of a swelling cathedral hymn. Thaniel had all but felt the stars in the sky slam into his chest and knock the breath out of his system.

But beneath the euphoria, there always lurked the terrible fear that it would come back one day. That clairvoyance would awaken from its slumber, perhaps just shocked into submission for a short while, and dig its awful teeth in once more. He felt a little as though their happiness was waltzing on eggshells, and he could see malicious eyes staring out from the jagged edges. He swallowed hard, made himself smile, and gently touched Mori’s elbow.

“Keita? You okay?”

Mori remained still for a beat, then blinked, clearing the storm from his eyes.

He edged towards the table. “Yes, fine, I…” He touched the book with his fingertips. “I just… I’ve remembered something.”

A mound of snow fell from Thaniel’s mind and landed heavily in his stomach. He smiled tightly. “Remembered…”

Mori caught the slight tremble in his voice. “Normal person remembered, don’t worry. Well… sort of, I… it’s hard to explain.”

“Right…” Thaniel took a step forward to join him at the table. He watched Mori’s hands tease the book to the edge of the table. He frowned. “Right.”

Mori laid it flat across one palm, and opened it gently. “I remember reading it… now. Rather, I remember _remembering_ reading it now.”

“That’s not normal people remembering,” Thaniel said through a tight throat, unable to keep the dark shades out of his voice. Mori waved a hand dismissively in front of his face.

“Trust me, it’s… this is fine.”

He flicked through the pages, almost manually activating the newly illuminated section of his brain that processed in real time. It remained a childish, carnival ride thrill, not knowing what was on the next page.

And then all at once, his breath caught in his throat, as his memory of a memory caught up with the present. He paused. Thaniel glanced at him.

_“Rapunzel?”_

It was a story, Mori had been told by someone, somewhere – he wasn’t yet used to using his backwards memory much – that it was the story of a child of noble descent, hidden from the world to shield it from their unique and powerful ability.

“Oh.” He said, quietly.

“Oh?” Thaniel asked.

_“…oh.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, my lovelies! Please drop a comment if you have the time, it really makes my day!


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